Recreational and competitive skateboarding requires increasingly robust hardware, particularly to facilitate tricks and maneuvers which impart high impact and high torque loads to the skateboard. Risers are used to increase the space between the truck and the deck, allowing the truck to twist further without causing wheel bite, i.e., when the wheel touches the deck and stops rotating. Wedges can be used to change the turning characteristics of a truck. Risers and wedges, due to their intended function, are therefore necessarily constructed of resilently deformable materials such as foam, plastic, or rubber.
High stress concentrations on skateboard decks near the truck assembly baseplates can be especially problematic as well as costly. The failure of skateboards is often caused by increased stress concentrations around the bolt holes as the result of torque applied to the skateboard deck about the edge of the truck baseplate, particularly when landing slightly off center of the bolt holes.
Methods and apparatus are thus needed winch address these shortcomings of presently known skateboard hardware.